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WHAT: Potluck Party/Housewarming; lot's of food, laughter and a little bit of witchcraft ^^;
WHO: Me and my friends Jehan, Tessa and Anne. With the special participation of Gerald (Anne's better half) and Chris.
WHERE: Jehan's fabulous new home in Gimpo.
WHEN: Sunday, June 6th.
My friends and I had been planning to have a potluck party as early as April, but everyone seemed to be swamped with work, part-time jobs and family affairs that we couldn't squeeze a day out of our busy schedules to make it happen. The days and months kept counting, and the pressure from my impending departure got bigger and bigger, so I sent everyone an 'it's-now-or-never' text to meet on Saturday, June 5th. Eventually, it was moved to Sunday to give way to Jehan's pre-natal check-up. With Jehan's pregnancy and her new apartment, we even got bigger reasons to meet and celebrate!
So the Potluck Party/Housewarming was set, and everyone's expected to bring some food. Armed with a heavy paper bag reeking of pineapples and bell peppers from the Sweet and Sour Pork dish I made earlier, I rode the subway to meet Anne and Gerald. All three of us went to find Jehan's new house hidden amongst a sea of beautiful ricefields and farms. Their apartment complex is new so it was a little hard to find. Gerald, being the courteous man that he is, made a quick stop to buy a huge pack of toilet paper for Jehan (it's customary for Koreans to give toilet paper when they visit a house for the first time). Gerald went back home shortly after dropping us there..
Jehan lives in a beautiful place surrounded by ricefields. I can just imagine how beautiful it's gonna be in fall when the ricefields become golden in color.
As soon as we entered the new house, the party got rolling. Our conversation drifted from wallpapers, to curtains, to pregnancy, and to life in general. Coincidentally, it was Jehan's wedding anniversary that day so topics about significant others were also one of the things we talked about. Tessa had a prior engagement so she had go there all by herself. Jehan's house is a grueling 2 hour bus ride from Seoul to Gimpo, but Tessa beat the odds and showed up 2 hours later carrying a cake! Here's the food we had at the party...
My Sweet and Sour Pork with pineapples and slightly discolored bell peppers.
Anne's Galbi and Chapchae...
Tessa brought dessert, delicious White Mocha Cake..
So four hungry and overly energetic girls in a fabulous new house with endless things to talk and laugh about.. It was a riot from then on!
All's good till Chris called saying he's coming to pick me up at 8. It's so hard to leave when the party is as good as that. To make the most out of my one hour left, I decided to try a trick my mom taught me when I was a kid. Some may call it witchcraft, I call it an ingenious trick to know how many babies a woman will have and what genders their babies are going to be. My mom learned it from her Highschool Physics teacher, and from then on she has been performing this trick. She had done it to over a hundred people since she was young, and she never got it wrong. Jehan was the first to try of course. Since it's still early to check her baby's gender thru ultrasound, she has to wait 3 months to know I'm right (that is if the doctor will tell her the sex cause it's illegal to know the gender of the baby here while you're pregnant).
Chris came shortly after that. We convinced him to eat and chat a little before heading home. It was a long drive to Suwon and I was so tired when we came back home. But I couldn't stop smiling and thinking how fun that Sunday afternoon had been!
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